The reason we have false rape claims

The number of false rape claims cannot be known accurately, but there are many speculations about the percentages. There are many motivations for falsely claiming rape, and the most common one I hear people throw out is that “she was punishing him for something else”. Setting aside the debate about the level of vindictive behavior of some women, let’s not ignore what is definitely a factor in many false rape claims: slut-shaming.

A society that treats women like they lose something from sexual activity is going to find women defending themselves from that alleged loss by any means: including falsely claiming that sexual activity was neither wanted nor consented to.

A woman has sex, and is slut-shamed for it. This may cause her to feel the need to “protect” her perceived sexual “value” – how best to do that? Claim she didn’t want the sex in the first place. Suddenly, the man’s a rapist.

Don’t tell me this doesn’t happen, because it’s exactly what happened to a male friend of mine. A woman who internalized slut-shaming so much that she frequently called other women sluts and judged them harshly for promiscuous sexual activity, fooled around with someone I know, felt shame for doing so, and to protect her reputation as a virgin and someone who would never allow a man like him to have sexual access to her, claimed he raped her and ruined his life.

This is the result of slut-shaming, a concept that really shouldn’t exist amongst civilized people, particularly amongst my fellow libertarians who claim to have a fondness for logic and reason.